


Change Back

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Shapeshifting, Trans character written by trans author, monsters both figurative and literal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 10:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17702747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: “I hate having to do that,” Crowley murmured. “I’m always afraid I’ll forget how to change back.” –pg. 106Warlock Dowling is a very normal boy. Fortunately for him, he has a very abnormal nanny.





	Change Back

**Author's Note:**

> written for the tarot prompt on tumblr for "The Devil: addiction, detachment, materialism, monsters."

Crowley had had to learn rather a lot about childcare in a very short span of time, when she and Aziraphale had decided on their plan to keep an eye on Warlock. She could have willed away any mistakes she might have made, of course, but the idea didn’t sit right with her when the entire purpose of this little endeavor was to ensure the child grew up balanced and normal. And there was the Dowlings. Any parents would of course have certain expectations about the way their spawn was to be treated, and it wouldn’t have done to have been continually miracling in front of them. Or at least, that was what Crowley had assumed going in. 

For the first year or so, the Dowlings were very preoccupied with making sure Crowley was doing a good job with their son. Harriet moreso than her husband, who was away for long stretches and often seemed to be preoccupied on the rare occasions he was at the house. But as Warlock grew, learning to toddle and then to walk and then to run and make noise and ride the tricycle Crowley failed to persuade him to ride in the house, it seemed both Mr and Mrs Dowling paid him less and less mind. 

It troubled Crowley rather a lot, actually. There was nothing, as far as he and Aziraphale had been able to glean by Warlock’s third birthday, particularly demonic about him. He was almost an unsettlingly normal boy. There was no occult reason his parents should ignore him the way they did. 

Which meant there was probably a human reason, and Crowley didn’t feel remotely qualified to deal with such a thing. People were wonderful, and people were terrible, and she’d been experiencing both firsthand for millennia but this was something different altogether. It was one thing to deal with the best and worst of humanity for herself. It was entirely another to deal with it on behalf of a small boy who was busy learning the world and everything in it.

Which was why, when Mr Dowling yelled at Warlock until he cried one evening for absolutely no reason at all, just because the child had been chattering away to himself as he played with his toys, Crowley snapped her fingers and made it all go away despite her earlier commitment to herself. Neither of them would remember this event, but Crowley would, and she glared at Thaddeus as she scooped up Warlock and carried him off to get ready for bed.

“Do you think it’s possible you’ve gotten too attached?” Aziraphale asked gently, hours later when she’d recounted the event to him, fuming and grinding her teeth together. 

“I’ve always been attached.” Crowley snapped. “That’s the whole purpose of this little charade, isn’t it, protecting the world because we’re both attached?” 

Aziraphale didn’t say anything, but he did lay a hand on Crowley’s shoulder and give it a light squeeze. 

After the third time Crowley had to erase Mr Dowling and Warlock’s memories she stormed across the house to Aziraphale’s room and threw the door open with a bang, startling him into spilling tea down himself. He swore as he tidied up and glared the book he’d been reading back into a stainless state. 

“I don’t know what to do about Mr Dowling.” Crowley said without preamble, and Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. 

“My dear,” he said, very quietly, “why do you feel you need to do anything?” 

Crowley stared at him. 

“Are you serious?” 

Several expressions flickered across Aziraphale’s face in rapid succession before settling on sympathy. “Yes, Crowley, I am. If we hadn’t stepped in, this is the man who would be father to the Antichrist. Perhaps he’s supposed to treat the boy badly.” 

Crowley slammed the door closed behind her and leaned against it, staring at Aziraphale with her arms crossed. “And we’re trying to change that, remember? We’re trying to keep him from ending the world?”

Aziraphale was silent for a long moment, looking at Crowley with tenderness that made her chest ache. “You don’t need to justify wanting to protect him.” 

Crowley blinked, and then scowled, and then blinked again. Her eyes had gotten rather wet. Aziraphale stood up and moved to stand beside her, offering her a handkerchief, which she glared at until he put it back in his pocket. 

“This is harder than I thought it was going to be.” Crowley said after a moment.

“I know.” 

“There’s too much at stake to make rash decisions but…” 

Aziraphale pulled her into a hug, and she went willingly, relaxing against him in a way she never let herself relax these days, always wound too tight, keeping an eye on too many things at once. It was like being back Downstairs, except now when she let her guard down it was a child who suffered, a child that she wished she cared about just a little bit less. She didn’t know how to detach again now it had happened. 

“He’ll start showing his powers soon, and then his father will have to learn very quickly to behave a bit better or he’ll get hurt himself.” Crowley said, making her tone as indifferent as she could. Aziraphale pressed a kiss to her forehead and she clung more tightly to him. 

He didn’t. Warlock remained as stubbornly ordinary as he’d always been through his fourth birthday, and his fifth, and Crowley did her best to make sure Mr Dowling behaved himself using non-occult means whenever possible. It was a month before Warlock turned six that she threw this approach out the window.

Mr Dowling had just come home from spending six weeks in America, and Mrs Dowling had retired to her room with several more bottles of wine than Crowley thought was truly healthy for a human, and Warlock had tried to sit on his father’s lap to ask him to read a book of scary stories. Warlock loved scary stories, although Crowley suspected it was more because they were what she read the boy than because of some inherent connection to the material. Warlock truly was an astonishingly normal child, and when Mr Dowling slapped him away from trying to clamber up into the large chair in the sitting room, it wasn’t Warlock who changed shape, grew fangs and claws and and hard black scales and a mouth like a jagged tear in the world. It was Crowley. 

For a long moment, Warlock and Mr Dowling stared at her, Warlock rubbing his face which was even now beginning to bruise. Then Mr Dowling opened his mouth and screamed. Crowley smiled and slinked across the room. 

“Lissssten to me.” She said, in a voice deeper than any human voice she’d ever affected. “You will not lay a hand on Warlock again, do you understand?” 

Mr Dowling whimpered. 

Crowley closed the remaining distance in front of his chair and loomed over him, poking him with one scaly, long finger which ended in a jagged nail. “ _Do you understand_?” 

A bead of blood was pooling under the point of Crowley’s nail, pressed against Mr Dowling’s collarbone, and she didn’t remove it. Slowly, slowly, Mr Dowling nodded. 

“Good.” Crowley withdrew the hand. “Now get out.” 

Mr Dowling fled the room, the sound of his footsteps echoing down the long hallway of the large house. Crowley took a deep breath, closed her eyes momentarily, and tried to slow down her racing heart, will herself back into the figure of Nanny Astoreth. It was terribly difficult and Crowley reflected, not for the first time, that the trouble with having the option to look like something out of a child’s nightmare was that it was hard, afterwards, to remember what was good about being as vulnerable as having a human shape made you.

When she opened her eyes again, Warlock was looking up at her with an expression of wonder on his face. Crowley blinked at him, confused, and her confusion grew when he flung himself against her and hugged her tight. 

“What the–” 

“Brother Francis told me last week about guardian angels.” Warlock said, still clinging tightly to Crowley. “Told me God sends someone to protect all his children.” 

“Yeah, I’ll bet he did.” Crowley said with a disgruntled snort, but she knelt down and pulled Warlock close, running her fingers over his cheek and feeling a flare of anger at Mr Dowling at the way the boy winced slightly under the touch. “You don’t listen to that  _man_. You listen to me.” 


End file.
